Bowl cuts, perms and other childhood hair disasters

My son Gavin’s hair had gotten really long and shaggy. Unfortunately he inherited my hair: bone-straight, baby-fine and a bit on the mousy brown side. (From what I can recall about my hair – it hasn’t been au naturel for a long time.) By contrast Lauren’s hair is like my husband’s: thick, curly and full of body. And she will probably grow to despise her curls because we are never happy with the hair we have been given.

Bernard brought Gavin to an old-school barbershop down the street because our usual place was closed. Gavin took one step inside, eyed the old shop with its old chairs and slightly grizzled patrons and yelled, “NOOOOOO! It’s not fancy enough!” I howled at the word “fancy” although I knew what he meant.

On previous occasions we had taken him and his sister to a special kids salon where they sat in rockets or racecars instead of old barbers chairs and afterwards they got to dive into a tank of plastic balls and receive a certificate along with a locket of their hair. We had made a grave mistake by going to these special salons: Gavin now equated haircuts with entertainment.

We had to remedy this. A new place opened down the street and the owner seemed quite nice. The prices were considerably cheaper than the place with the ball pit. I explained how I wanted his hair kept a little longer but just tidied up a bit. I still wanted him to look cool, a signal to others that Gavin clearly has hip parents.

Once we assured him that this place was fancy enough, she got to work. She kept it long on top as we had asked but cut the bottom a bit too short. I noticed Bernard’s grimace but said nothing. When she finally finished and Gavin hopped down from the chair, I had a terrible realization. No one would think we were hip parents, because Gavin now had a bowl cut, circa 1984. The same haircut I had been unfairly cursed with for many long years as a child.

Website Mashable describes the bowl cut as the “comic sans of haircuts.” I first had my hair cut into this horrendous and unflattering shape around the age of five, shortly after Dorothy Hamill won skating gold in the 1976 Olympic Games and the whole world decided they loved her hair. For a while almost every girl at Park Street School in Dominion looked like Dorothy Hamill. The problem was I continued to look like Dorothy Hamill for a long time after all the other girls started to look like Kristy McNichol.

I know I’m not alone when it comes to terrible childhood hairstyles. I conducted an informal Facebook survey and found that most women voted the childhood perm as their worst look.

Men’s hair nightmares varied from Mohawks to “the Rene Simard” to DIY jobs using a home razor comb barber kit. Many a bad haircut has resulted from an untrained parent armed with sheer determination and a set of clippers.

When I see pictures of myself during those dark days I realize how traumatized I am by that horrible haircut and then I swear I will never subject my kids to bad hair, ever. We’re going to let Gavin’s hair grow out a bit and then find a new, hip barber. They say the difference between a bad haircut and a good one is two weeks, but the memories can last a lifetime.

Jen Gouthro, a Dominion native, moved away from Cape Breton more than 20 years ago. She has lived in Antigonish, Banff, Maine and Windsor, Ont. and currently resides in Toronto. She can be reached at Caper_in_Toronto@hotmail.com.